It's the Strawberry Festival Y'all!

Last year when we were in Roanoke house hunting there were signs everywhere for the Strawberry festival. We were here looking for our house, then we went back to Rhode Island for 10 days and then officially moved here (when we do something we do it quickly!)

The festival was over the weekend we were going to be back in RI packing and I was so upset. I was also pretty excited to find out that in Virginia, strawberry season comes so early. In RI it seemed early compared to Calgary, and here we were gaining extra wonderful months of berries.

I was beginning to lose hope that we would be able to go this year. It only went Friday and Saturday, and Friday we ran out of time. Saturday was pretty jam packed. We had a ball game at 9am, then a spring festival at the kids' school at 11, then we had to work concession at the ball field from 1:00-2:30. I figured by the time we finished all that it would probably not only be too late, but we would all be complete disasters.

Well, not only did we get to go to the Strawberry Festival, but we got to go to the Roanoke Weiner stand on the last day it was open in its original location.

The Roanoke Weiner Stand

I am not really much of a hot dog person (like I usually would run in the other direction), but this was a mighty tasty dog. I don't know what was in the chili's secret recipe, but it was yummy

And obviously it made her happy!

Finally onto the Strawberry Festival!

This is the awesome lady who put an extra scoop of strawberries on my strawberry shortcake. The strawberries were all cut by volunteers, and the shortcake was made by them as well. Yummo!

Drool...

A little bit of fun was had as well!

More baking.... I didn't clean today either

Amazing the reasons I'm finding to not clean the house. The good thing is I threw around enough flour in the kitchen today that as soon as I'm done this blog I have to go turn on the vacuum. Or, I could try and convince one of the kids to do it for me. Hmmm, that sounds like a much better option.

Jenna has to bring in enough cookies for 20 kids tomorrow. Their class is having a mini store set up to teach them about money and how it works. Each kid has to sell either a good or service to help them learn about making money transactions. Jenna picked cookies. Shocking eh?

Of course Mr. Fancypants Jacob does not like chocolate, so I made him some scones. I was thinking about them yesterday after making my pop tarts. The last time I had a scone, my sister and I went out to a tea house in Rhode Island. We were both so disappointed as they were not at all the scones we remembered from our childhood vacations on Vancouver Island. On top of it, they were much, much too big. I made smaller scones (still more than big enough I felt) and put the homemade jam from yesterday on them. He was pretty satisfied!

Here's the table with my baking insanity on it

When they get along with each other they're BFF's. Jacob's helping Jenna decorate the boxes the cookies are going to go in

Jenna's stuffing the boxes with cookies. It was "one for me, one for the box" for a bit; but we got that under control!

The final product, all ready in their baskets to go to school. 

Little kid hand trying to grab one last cookie!

Avoidance tactics leads to baking in the kitchen

I was supposed to clean house today. So, naturally I found many other things to do to keep myself occupied to avoid the dreaded housework. I like a clean house, I just don't like cleaning house!

My morning started off with my Zite magazine on my iPad. Love, love, love this app. Going through it is one of the more enjoyable parts of my day. This morning gave me two really good ideas to avoid housework... I mean recipes to try out.

The first was chocolate covered peanut butter. Two of my favorite things. I got the recipe from The Brown Eyed Baker.

Here is a picture of her finished product (so you know what it *should* look like)

Feeling up for the challenge, I headed off to the Co-op, ground up my own peanut butter and bought Callebaut chocolate chips in the bulk section. I also spent a great deal of time holding a bag of these

but since I basically have eaten my weight in them over the past couple of weeks (and I have three bags stashed around the house - in vain hopes my husband and daughter won't find them) I put the bag back.

Got home and started on my peanut butter delight

Peanut butter, butter and brown sugar melted together

Then icing sugar added to it

At this point I had to pay the price for my laziness. I didn't sift my icing sugar and it had terrible lumps in it. I threw the whole thing in the Cuisinart and blended it

 The peanut butter was supposed to cool to room temperature before it got shaped into cute little eggs on the pan. I could not get it to stay solid. Finally I put the peanut butter in the fridge for a while. After I got some peanut butter blobs on the pan I stuck them in the freezer to get a better shape. I had completely lost any hope of having "eggs" by this point.

I melted the chocolate chips with some shortening

Here are my peanut butter blobs waiting for their chocolate bath

After the bath. I should have tidied up the chocolate, but the extra run off was so yummy I hated to do that.

Checked out by my official taster, Jenna

The peanut butter inside

I had bought sprinkles, but completely forgot about them. We were driving home from soccer tonight when Jacob asked why there were sprinkles in the back seat of the car. Oh well....

They were delicious!!! Most definitely will do these again.

There was more time left and I still didn't want to clean, so I made homemade pop tarts I found on Scientifically Sweet

Fortunately, I had some pastry in the freezer, but the homemade strawberry jam was not ready right away so my first batch was with peach jam from the farmer's market.

My taster could barely wait to get in there...

Later on I did make them with the strawberry jam. Much, much better. but, I love strawberry jam...

You know you want some....

My other taste tester thought these were rather yummy

then I made banana bread....

Tomorrow I'll clean, I swear :-)

Chicken Sashimi.... whaaaa????

I have developed quite the obsession with Anthony Bourdain and his show No Reservations. I must admit I have a little bit of a girl crush on him, but not in the "hey, let's run away together" kind of way - more in the "man, I bet he would be really funny to go have a drink with" kind of way. Because he is really funny. I love how he is quick and witty and tells it as he sees it on his show. His humor may not be for everyone, but I get it - and enjoy it.

Brad and I were watching his show where he's in Japan last night. I'm sure we will have to watch it again since Jacob is obsessed with all things Japan. I think it started with his love of sushi, but it has gone much, much deeper than that. Jacob is convinced when he grows up he's going to live in Japan. Brad's heading to Japan for work later this year which has Jacob turning green with envy.

Anyhoo.... back to the show. One of the places Anthony Bourdain goes to serves yakitori. Don't know what that is? Check out the definition here, basically it's skewered chicken. The chef at the restaurant they were eating at (called Toriki) used the entire chicken. He slaughtered the chickens each morning so they were as fresh as possible and then made each serving to order.

One of the dishes the chef served was chicken sashimi. I had to do a double take, rewind the TV and make sure I saw and heard what I thought I had. Yep, chicken sashimi. My first thought was ewwwwwww, followed by 'hey, how can they do that?' I mean, isn't chicken supposed to be always well cooked or we die?

Apparently not. This looks pretty much like what they ate. It kind of gives me the heebie geebies. Even though I eat raw fish (which until a few years ago also gave me the heebie geebies).

Anthony Bourdain talks about how there in that area where chickens are really raised free range, and then they are slaughtered fresh, the risk of salmonella is way less than it is in the huge, mass produced factors they make chickens (what word do I use - they don't raise them, the quality of life is so low - I don't want to use the word 'raise').

Interesting.

I'm not sure I'm in a huge hurry to go out and try chicken sashimi, but I have HUGE chicken issues. To the point where I really don't want to buy/eat chicken unless I am getting it from our local farmer and I know they were free range (I'm the same with eggs). I may not be going to eat my chicken raw, but it sure confirms the fact that I want to keep buying my chicken fresh, local and free range.

- on that note, I'm meeting my farmer tomorrow at the market to pick up our 1/4 beef. Next week we are meeting him to get our lamb. Our freezer will be full again, and I will know where all my meat came from.

Italian(ish) Hot Chocolate

I got an iPad for Christmas (squeal!), and one of my favorite apps quickly became the Zite magazine. I love that it's a "smart" magazine in that it pays attention to my likes and dislikes and tailors the magazine to my interests.

As a result, I'm getting a lot of food/cooking articles. One such article was a recipe for Italian hot chocolate. My husband used to do a lot of traveling in Europe, and at the end of the vacation he would go spend the weekend with my cousin in Rome. One time he took her out for what he said was the fanciest (I think probably that meant the most expensive -but who knows) hot chocolate in Rome. I was wondering what made said hot chocolate so special. But, then as with so many other things, I promptly forgot about it. It shows what a chaotic year it was because I usually never forget anything that has to do with chocolate.

Jenna love hot cocoa and often has it on a cool morning (or sometimes as a part of her after school snack). I already am kind of a hot cocoa snob in that we make our cocoa, it's not what I grew up thinking of as "hot chocolate" where you squeeze the Quick into some hot milk (yuck).

So, I came across this blog on my Zite magazine and I knew I had to give it a try. Now, I didn't go full out and put in the corn starch - so it didn't get really thick. I also didn't add in the half and half (I didn't have any and my waistline had a lot of damage done to it over Christmas - either I need to go buy bigger clothes or cut back on these things).

I made hot cocoa for Jenna yesterday and along with the cocoa, milk and sugar, we melted in some high quality chocolate chips. Ohhhhhh did it ever make it rich and yummy! I may have found a new love! Another thing I liked about it was that a little goes a long ways. I am known for sometimes (like 1pm every day) going overboard on my chocolate. This is rich and strong enough that even I only needed a few sips and my chocolate craving was satisfied.

Now I have to head off to the elliptical to try and work off enough calories I can indulge in a cup of this good stuff later today. What a great way to spend a rainy Monday!

Paula Deen / Anthony Bourdain

When it's not too hot, too cold, or I'm not dying of a cold (I'm man sick with a cold right now. That's right... I'm so pathetic I can only be called man sick) I walk up and down our mountain with Dottie the Dotted Dog. When it's just the two of us I take my iPhone and listen to an audiobook. Right now I'm listening to Anthony Bourdain tell his story in Kitchen Confidential.  The man is a riot. What got me hooked was listening to him at the beginning of his book tell of a trip he took as a child (I think he was around 9) with his parents and younger brother to France. They took the boat over (he's old ) and on the ride he had vichyssoise that he said was fantastic. He said it was the first time he realized food could have a purpose besides simply feeding your body - that it could actually be enjoyed. He talks about how his parents would take him and his brother to many different restaurants in an attempt to have them try different foods in France, but they stubbornly stuck with steak and frites or hamburgers.  One evening Anthony said he noticed his mom was taking much longer than normal getting ready for their dinner out. There seemed to be much excitement and anticipation about that evening's supper. They drove to the restaurant, his mom reached under the seat of the car and gave Anthony and his brother new copies of the comic book Tin Tin, got out of the car with their father, locked the doors and told them they had to stay in the car. They went in for something like a 3 hour supper. Anthony said what that did for him was make him wonder what was in that restaurant that was so fantastic that his parents didn't want to put up with him and his brother so that they could enjoy their meal. *It also says something about the time that the boys could be locked in the car for hours and no one thought anything of it!* He goes on to expose all the things that go on behind closed doors in the kitchen. I'm not very far along in the book (it's been cold out and I'm wimpy), but I have watched him on his show No Reservations a lot. He's kind of a bad ass. The rebel chef. He's known for drinking, smoking and swearing - but oh man is he funny. I think he would be a really funny person to go out for a coffee with.  Paula Deen was all over the news this weekend with the fact that she's been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Also that she was joining up with a diabetes drug maker as a spokesperson. Anthony Bourdain had some interesting things to say about her. Here's a clip from ABC news: Deen, 64, confirmed today on NBC's Today Show that she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago and she is now launching a new campaign, "Diabetes in a New Light." The campaign is in partnership with diabetes drug maker Novo Nordisk. "I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest," she told USA Today. "I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn't armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God's time." Deen reportedly treats her diabetes with the company's drug Victoza, a daily injectable drug that is meant to maintain blood sugar levels. She will appear in an advertisement for the drug later this month, USA Today reported. Anthony Bourdain, a New York-based chef and host of the Travel Channel's "No Reservations," has long been critical of Deen's cuisine, having told TV Guide that the chef is the "worst, most dangerous person in America" because of her high-fat cooking. In the wake of her diabetes announcement, Bourdain had even more criticism to sling. "When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 Diabetes... It's in bad taste if nothing else," he told Eater. ~~~ What makes me sad is I've read in several places that she says she does not plan to make major changes to her lifestyle. I found this disturbing: Deen says that when she got the diagnosis, "I wasn't about to change to my life, but I have made simple changes in my life, like cutting back on one of my favorites things, sweet tea, and for a Southern girl, that's a big deal." But Levin says that diabetes should change your life. "This isn't about what is the best drug so it cannot change my life. There's no such thing. The drug might help you put a Band-Aid on your disease, but it certainly isn't going to stop the progression ... Paula Deen, you have the power and the influence to save a lot of other people's lives. It would be incredible, as a dietician, if she did wield that power for good and not for drugs." ~~~  Sorry Paula, I have watched your shows. Cutting back on just your sweet tea is not going to even begin to deal with the issue.  This thing bothers me on many levels.  It bothers me that she's known for three years that she has diabetes that is most likely brought on by lifestyle choices. That during that time she's continued to host (and make money) her cooking shows that revel in butter, cream and other kinds of heart attack fat.  It bothers me that she's just now coming forward with the news of her medical condition - with the news that she's partnered up with a drug company. It's not like she just discovered this news and made the announcement. She's known for a long time, and made this deal with the drug company. But, a thing that was extra troublesome for me was when I read that she was cutting back on things like sweet tea. Her diagnosis does call for a major lifestyle change, and I think it's irresponsible for her as a celebrity who has such a huge following to say that she is not going to.  I was watching a Nutri System commercial at the YMCA the other day and I thought much the same as I am now. They were advertising how you can lose a ton of weight eating their food and following their program without giving up anything of the food you love. They were showing chocolate cake, and other "treats" but they all had to be Nuri System food in order for the weight loss to work. Problem is they are all chemically / artificially made. It seemed like instead of taking charge and responsibility for your body and health, learning to eat healthy and exercise that the message is "take this drug and you can live a perfectly happy life without having to change anything you are doing now." I don't like that.  I am firmly on team Bourdain now. I used to at least enjoy watching Paula Deen's show even if I was not going to cook anything that began with "let's just start with 2 sticks of butter y'all".  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.